The present invention disclosed herein relates to a low temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) inductor, and more particularly, to an electronic device including an LTCC inductor.
Recently, electronic devices are required to be miniaturized and have high performance. To this end, a three dimensional stacking technology for manufacturing various integrated circuits and passive devices in a single module through a system-in-package process has been widely used.
According to a low temperature cofired ceramic (LTCC) technology, inner electrodes and passive devices are printed on a plurality of green sheets formed of glass-ceramic based material, so as to form a desired circuit, and then, the green sheets are stacked and cofired to manufacture a multi-chip module.
Through the LTCC technology, a circuit substrate and a combination module having high performance and high reliability can be fabricated. At first, the LTCC technology was expected to be used in various fields, but the LTCC technology was limited only to fields requiring special reliability, such as super computer fields or aerospace fields. Thus, the market of the LTCC technology was not expanded because of typical resin multi layered substrates. However, as the mobile communication market has rapidly grown in recent years, the LTCC technology is being widely used to achieve the miniaturization, low cost and high performance of a high frequency analog circuit.
Typical ceramic multi-layered substrates, formed of alumina-based material, require a high temperature firing process. However, according to the LTCC technology, glass-based material is added to perform a low temperature firing process. As such, a firing temperature is decreased to use a high electrical conductive metal, having low cost and low melting temperature, as the material of an interconnection of an inner layer. In addition, the LTCC technology prevents the shrinkage of a green sheet in an x-axis direction and a y-axis direction, so as to fabricate a circuit without modifying an initial design.
The LTCC technology is used for power amplifier modules, engine control units (ECUs) for automobiles, band pass filters, micro antennas, and wireless interfaces of mobile phones, so as to achieve high frequency, high reliability, low cost, miniaturization and low power consumption of a product.